


There Is an Afterwards

by RogueBelle



Series: Afterwards [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Explicit Language, F/M, First Time, Idiots in Love, Oral Sex, Porn with Feelings, Post-Battle, Post-Battle of Winterfell, Post-Episode: s08e03 The Long Night, Shameless Smut, The Bang That was Promised
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-01
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2020-02-15 16:36:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18673453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RogueBelle/pseuds/RogueBelle
Summary: The Battle of Winterfell is over, and somehow, they're still alive, a painful miracle. Jaime and Brienne turn to each other for solace and celebration in the aftermath.“It’s only fair, isn’t it?” he asks. “You knelt last night -- gods, was it only last night? -- and now it’s my turn.”





	There Is an Afterwards

**Author's Note:**

> This fic would not leave me alone for the past few days. It's my first time writing Jaime/Brienne, though I've been what I guess you'd call a casual shipper of them since _Storm of Swords_. These past two episodes really super-charged my interest. Hope you enjoy!

Lady Sansa is first to take charge of practical matters in the aftermath, with the help of that wildling girl. She organizes what horses are left to them to begin dragging sledges with corpses outside the walls. “Winterfell will again be for the living.”

The Dragon Queen peels her sorrow-stricken self away from the body of her champion and, though her face is hollow with grief, begins to assess what remains of their forces: the dead are too many to count, and many of the living need medical treatment, and fast. This, she organizes, with the girl from Naath at her side, whose shoulder she occasionally grips, for comfort, for steadying.

Arya Stark wheels her strange brother-not-brother in from the wildwood, and the story begins to spread: the Night King defeated by a deadly slip of a girl wielding the blade once sent to kill Bran Stark. Incredible, impossible, if they hadn’t just watched legions crumble to dust as proof.

And Jaime Lannister and Brienne of Tarth, half-swooning with exhaustion, sink back against the wall and slowly turn their eyes to each other.

Neither speaks. What words could there possibly be, in the wake of such horror? And Brienne has screamed her throat raw, in any case.

They’re penned in by death: the grotesque heaps of the Night King’s army, and the battered corpses of those who hadn’t turned. Whatever ladder or steps they took to this defensible perch is buried under the heaps. Brienne looks to her other side, to Podrick -- and her heart lurches, seeing him collapsed against the wall, his eyes closed.  _ ‘No, no. Not now, not when we’ve--’ _ But before she can think the word “won”, much less wonder if it’s appropriate for their circumstances, Pod looks up at her. He’s too tired to speak, almost too tired to draw breath, it seems, but he waggles a hand to indicate that she shouldn’t worry.

So Brienne slides down, her legs abandoning all pretense of being capable of holding her upright. Beside her, Jaime’s sword falls from limp fingers. He doubles at the waist, his left hand colliding with his knee. Brienne knows her own face is a blank; she simply doesn’t have the energy to emote. Jaime’s features, though, are drawn with confusion and disbelief. His eyes are wide; his jaw forward and slightly agape.

“We’re alive.” He says it like he can’t quite believe it. A gasping laugh escapes him, and he rakes his hand through his hair. “My brother was miraculously fucking right. We lived!” His laughter peals out helplessly, mirthlessly, madly. It would echo, Brienne thinks, but for all the bodies padding the courtyard.

And then, the laughter turns into ragged, heaving breaths, then outright sobs. He crumples further, his knees crashing to the brick beneath them, his whole body heaving with the wracking effort. His handsome face contorts in a rictus of agony and desolation and relief, blessed relief, relief at a price too horrible to contemplate.

_ ‘He’s always been effusive,’ _ she thinks. For all his smirks and sneers, for all his haughtiness, he is a man of high emotion, demonstrative, even if those demonstrations sometimes go cloaked in irony and arrogance.

Not Brienne, who learned to keep close-guarded all that she feels, save for when she’s in the heat of battle. Then, only then, is it appropriate to howl out a tempest’s rage; no howling now, with the threat gone, leaving no excuse to show the tumult of emotions threatening to engulf her. Yet she blinks and discovers that her own cheeks are wet -- not only with sweat and blood and viscera, though there’s plenty of that to go around, but yes, with tears as well. Tears of horror and tears of relief, co-mingled as the relief of discovering herself yet alive wars with the nightmares she knows will plague her hereafter.

Gulping for air, Jaime attempts to master himself. His left hand flings out blindly, seeking some sort of purchase -- and Brienne catches it, squeezing his fingers.

 

*

 

Jaime’s next hour passes in a blur. Tyrion finds him, but he won’t let himself be separated from Brienne, as though if he takes his eyes off of her now, after staying by her side throughout the battle, some last-second catastrophe might snatch her away. Brienne in turn refuses to allow anyone to take Podrick away from her, and so all four of them end up in Tyrion’s chamber. Swords, armor, and Jaime’s golden hand all end up stacked near the door. They help each other through the steps of shedding blood-soaked garments, washing the filth from battered limbs, all of them too exhausted for any thoughts of modesty. Everything’s a haze anyway, or maybe that’s just the smoke from the thousand still-smoldering fires in and around Winterfell. Other figures move in and out the door, apparently responding to Tyrion’s commands, because the gods know no one else in the room is in a fit state to give them. Someone comes to sew up an ugly gash on Podrick’s back, and one on Brienne’s arm, and one on Jaime’s leg that he doesn’t even notice till someone is sticking a needle in him to draw the ragged edges of his flesh back together. Someone brings fresh tunics and trousers. Someone brings food, which none of them have stomach for. Then Tyrion takes Podrick by the sleeve and says something about wine being the true cure for all ills, and shouldn’t they go find some?

And suddenly, they are alone. The haze clears from Jaime’s vision, the chaos of the night sharpening gloriously around  _ her _ .

She’s a mess of bruises, ugly welters in purple and red and yellow, and so is he. There are old scars by her neck, great curving marks left by a bear’s claws, and fresh cuts on her brow, her cheek, her arms. Even damp, her hair shines brilliantly in the firelight, and her eyes are blue as the summer sky.

“We’re alive.” Her jaw trembles slightly as she says it, as though it’s too much to bear. It  _ is _ too much to bear, it’s impossible, yet here they are, and looking at her, Jaime thinks it’s possible they just might live to see the summer after all.

“We’re alive,” he echoes.

They stare at each other for a long moment, then he crosses the room in two long strides, sinks his hand into her short hair, locks his other arm around her waist, and kisses her like she’s the balm for all his wounds.

She stiffens in surprise, but only for a heartbeat. Her large hands clutch at his back, and she returns the kiss -- utterly artlessly, but with such enthusiasm that Jaime is thoroughly charmed. For a moment, everything else fades away: the crackle of fire in the room and the roar of it out the window, the still-gusting wind, the muted voices from elsewhere in the half-fallen castle. There is no world outside these walls, no war, no lingering horrors. There is only Brienne, her hands, her lips, her body pressed feverishly against his.

Then: “No,” she murmurs against his mouth, and he wouldn’t have thought anything could hurt, after that hellish night, but that word stabs. “We can’t--”

“I’m sorry,” he says, tearing himself away from her. He takes a step back, and his hand flexes and drops to his side. “I shouldn’t have--”

“Don’t you dare,” she rasps, closing the space between them, her lips swiftly descending to possess his. Then, just as swift, she pulls back. “I only meant-- There’s so much going on. There’s so much to do. We can’t do this, not now, not when we should be helping--”

Jaime scowls. Of course, of  _ course _ the damnable woman would still be thinking of others, even now. “I rather think we’ve done our share,” he insists. “The people who  _ weren’t _ hefting swords for a couple of hours can do theirs now.”

“But--”

“Brienne.” He presses his forehead to hers. “We gave everything we had, except our lives, and we were within a breath of doing that as well. We can take a few moments for ourselves.” His eyes flick meaningfully over at the door. “And if I know my little brother, he’s going to make damned sure no one disturbs us until we’re ready to leave this room of our own volition.”

She sputters, pulling back from him slightly. “You think he-- He left deliberately, so that we--”

“I suspect Tyrion wanted to leave us to figure out precisely  _ what _ we need most, and if what you want is to collapse on that bed and sleep until tomorrow, I don’t think anyone would blame you.”

Brienne shakes her head. “I couldn’t sleep yet. I don’t--”

There’s a flash of terror at the back of her eyes, and Jaime thinks he knows how that sentence ends.  _ ‘I don’t know what I’ll dream of, when I do sleep, and I don’t think I want to know.’ _ Neither does he.

So Jaime attempts a grin, in the hopes of chasing away both their demons. “Then if I might suggest something perhaps not so easeful but, I assure you, wonderfully restorative?”

Her face is stern as ever, as though this needs to be weighed as carefully as battle tactics, but -- bless the Seven and all they stand for -- she nods.

“Thank the gods,” he growls, and then they’re kissing again, and as wondrous as that is, it isn’t long before they’re tugging off their clothes. Jaime has no idea whose fingers are plucking whose laces, so frenzied are they to liberate themselves from the soft woolen garments. She helps him drag his shirt over his head; hers is in a wrap style, which he uses both hand and stump to push back over her shoulders. They shuck themselves out of their remaining clothing, though Jaime is reluctant to allow himself to be out of contact with her for even so long as that requires.

And then she freezes, with her smallclothes still puddled around one foot. “I don’t know what…”

Of course she doesn’t. She’s a virgin, and with a wry twist in his lips, he realizes he’s the next nearest thing, for all that he’s fathered three --  _ four _ \-- children. For him, there has only been Cersei, and that was always… different, something apart from the reality of the world. The blacksmith’s boy has probably had more women than him. Even that phrasing, to  _ have _ a woman, seems utterly inappropriate to him. There was no  _ having _ Cersei; if anything, she had him. And Brienne -- no, there would be no having her, either. But maybe they can have each other.

He draws a deep breathe and releases it slowly. “Do you want to do this?”

“Yes,” she says, and her eyes are locked with his when she says it, affirming her sincerity with a fearlessness that sends a thrill straight through him. Never one to flinch, his Brienne, though her face  _ has _ gone flushed with her self-consciousness. “But-- I don’t know how--”

Jaime can’t help but tease, “Did you know, when you blush, it looks like your freckles connect?” He taps a finger lightly against a few of those spackled across her uninjured cheek.

She swats at his hand. “You are the most insufferable--”

His finger trails instead down her neck and over her chest. “Look, they go all the way down, don’t they? I hadn’t noticed  _ these _ before…”

He bends his head, dropping kisses along the field of spots, nipping at a few of the larger ones along her collarbone, tongue darting out as though they had their own taste. He can hear her draw breath for another argument -- but by then, he’s followed the trail all the way to her nipple, and when he flicks his tongue over that, she gasps for an entirely different reason and her hands clutch at his arms. Her breasts are high and, yes, quite flat, and they feel perfect beneath his mouth, two gentle swells over the well-defined muscles of her chest.

“Jaime” escapes her, and oh, how sweet a sound it is, his name on her lips, no epithet, no “Ser”, just  _ Jaime _ .

For a moment, she has no further words. Her hands thread into his hair as he lavishes first one breast, then the other with diligently focused attention. But then, he makes a mistake: He straightens, leaning back enough to look at her naked body,  _ really _ look at it, so that he can glory in every bit of this marvelous woman. And that gives her an opening.

Perhaps it’s his hungry regard that reminds her to feel awkward, or maybe she’s just too damnably stubborn to drop what she had been about to say before, whatever persuasions he offers. “I still don’t know--” Her jaw works briefly, consternation written in her brow. “I mean, I know  _ how _ it works. Generally speaking.” She glances meaningfully down at his cock, hard and straining for want of her. “But I don’t know how to-- to make it  _ good _ .”

He leans in to nip at her ear. Strange, not to have to bend to do that, and delightful, to pull back and look her straight in the eye. “I recognize that allowing me to take the lead is a foreign concept for you,” he says, “but do you think you could manage it for once?” He feels a shiver go through her; surrendering control was never going to be easy for her, he knows. His instinct is to tighten his hold around her, to reassure her that he is  _ here _ and she is  _ safe _ , but with Brienne, that would be the wrong move. Instead, he lets his arms slacken slightly. “Will you trust me, Brienne?”

Gods, those guileless eyes of hers will be his undoing. He sees her answer in them, shining and brilliant, before she speaks it: “I will. I do.”

“ _ Excellent _ .” He captures her mouth in another kiss, and he maneuvers her back against the nearest wall. This time, when he kisses down her body, he doesn’t stop at her breasts. Jaime sinks to his knees, his hand and his maimed arm running eagerly down her sides.

“What are you doing?” she asks, as he nudges her legs apart.

“Did you, or did you not, just agree to trust me?” She’s even more stunning from this angle, a warrior goddess in the flickering firelight.

“I did, but I didn’t think--”

“It’s only fair, isn’t it?” he asks, his hand massaging its way along her thigh. “You knelt last night -- gods, was it only last night? -- and now it’s my turn.” He can feel the strength in her, runs his thumb along the line of a knotted muscle, and the idea of what it will be like to have those legs wrapped around him makes his cock twitch in anticipation.

“I knelt--” Brienne begins, and he can hear the argument in her tone.

“--to receive what you wanted most in this world, though you had never allowed yourself the freedom to give voice to that desire. Yes.”

She flushes, and he can see it all over, spreading over her chest and neck and face. “You can’t mean to imply that--”

“No,” he says, casting his eyes up to her face. “I don’t mean to imply. I mean to state, quite plainly and with enough vehemence to penetrate that incredibly stubborn head of yours--” His left hand slips around her thigh and slides down to her knee. “--that there is nothing in this world that would bring me greater joy and satisfaction--” He pulls gently on her knee, guiding her leg over his shoulder. “--than this.”

His eyes drop, slowly this time, as if he could memorize her, inch by inch. High breasts, tight stomach, narrow hips, straw-colored curls, and the most gorgeous cunt the gods could ever have created. His fingers find her cleft, and he gives the dewy curls a feather-light stroke. She trembles, even at such a light touch, and he thinks how much  _ fun _ this is going to be.

 

*

 

One of Brienne’s hands clutches at the wall behind her; the other is woven into Jaime’s dark-gold hair. Half her instinct is to pull him away; the other to hold him fast there forever, because what he’s doing with his fingers and mouth--

The man has skill, and Brienne tries not to think about he acquired it. In truth, that hardly matters in this moment, because she can also read in him all those traits which have made him an excellent swordsman. Diligent, focused, and able to read his opposite number. Except in this case, rather than preparing parries or searching for weaknesses, he’s responding to what pleases her. When she moans or gasps, he continues; when those moans begin to fade, he adjusts, stoking new fires within her; when she shifts her hips slightly, reaching for the center of this pulsing need that is threatening to consume her -- oh, then he gives her  _ more _ .

There are simply too many sensations to keep up with. His fingers, sliding along her slit, darting inside her; his lips and tongue, moving in complement to those strokes; the graze of his beard, setting tingles in her sensitive parts; the strength of his shoulder beneath her leg. A warrior’s training has made Brienne so aware of her body, wretched thing that she has often considered it. She could love it, in this moment, for giving her these impossible joys alongside all the strength she has taught it. She thought she knew all that it was capable of, knew every muscle and nerve, but Jaime reaches parts of her she’s never known how to imagine.

His finger curls, finding the absolute center of the ache inside her, at the same time that his lips close around the pearl just above her opening, and when he gently  _ sucks _ there, Brienne’s world comes apart. It’s a sublime shattering, white-hot and rippling throughout her whole body. It’s like being knighted, incandescent and triumphant and so unexpected.

Jaime kisses his way back up her body as she tries to catch her breath. Her limbs are shaking, she can’t make them stop, and how strange that feels, to have those well-honed instruments betraying her.

“There, you see?” Jaime murmurs. “Letting me take the lead can really be quite sensib-- ah!” He cries out, half-laughing, when she hits him in the shoulder. “Mind the bruises, ser.”

She seizes his mouth in another kiss. How is it that, after that shuddering pleasure, her hunger for him has not been sated? He cups her head between his hand and the stump of his other arm. She would never shy away from that, never give him cause to feel ashamed of it. She’ll never forget what he lost in her defense. She thinks of what a long road they’ve traveled, and tears pinch at the back of her eyes again.

Jaime’s kisses move to her throat, even ask he’s asking, “Brienne. Do you still want to--”

“More,” she demands, grasping him by the hip. “Everything.”

He groans, a low sound of untrammeled desire, and Brienne is surprised at how arousing that sound is. She’s so tall, he doesn’t need to lift her. She has only to open her legs, cant her hips towards him, and allow him to guide himself into her.

She’s heard it’s supposed to hurt, the first time, but it doesn’t. Any maidenhead she had was long ago lost on horseback, and thanks to his ministrations, she is slick and ready to accept him. His eyes lock with hers as he buries himself to the hilt and holds there, still, for a moment. Brienne is still trembling, but she realizes, so is he. Her hand comes up to his face, her thumb stroking his cheek just above the line of his greying beard. “Jaime…”

“I know.” His voice is low and husky, almost somber. “I know.”

Maybe there _ are _ no words for this feeling. “Love” seems too simple. An easy word to say, and such a harder word to live by. All Brienne knows is how astonishingly  _ right _ this feels.

He begins moving within her. His hand slips behind and grabs her arse, helping her to find the rhythm. That delicious pressure begins to build in her again, and Brienne discovers that the rage of battle is not the only time it’s appropriate to scream, after all. Someone’s going to hear them, for certain, and she doesn’t give a damn, not with Jaime clinging to her, eliciting new waves of bliss with each thrust.

At some point they tumble from the wall to the bed, and even through the delirium of lust, Brienne can’t help a snorting laugh. “What?” Jaime asks.

“It’s just, if anyone ever told me that one day I’d be fucking one Lannister in another Lannister’s bed--”

Then it’s his turn to laugh. “Highly improbable, yes, I’ll grant you that.”

He’s not inside her now, and absurdly, she thinks that she misses it. He kisses her, long and deep, before they sort out their tangle of limbs. He’s kneeling again, between her bent knees, and his hand runs over the muscular planes of her body. “Still trust me?” he asks, a mischievous glint in those green eyes.

Brienne nods. “Of course.”

Jaime rolls to his back, and he guides her to straddle him. At first, Brienne is reluctant to sink her full weight down on him, but once he’s positioned himself at her entrance, he presses firmly on her hips to encourage her. Then he gives his own hips a slight buck, and she starts to experiment with finding a rolling rhythm, discovering how the sensations spark in different places if she leans farther forward, or if she sits up straighter.  _ ‘In the sight of the Seven, what a revelation.’ _

 

*

 

It’s too much, too wonderful. If not for all the bruises and the stitches on his leg -- which he’s fairly certain are pulling open, and he’s in no mood to give a fuck if they do -- he might think that he actually had died out there in Winterfell’s courtyard after all, and found himself in the Warrior’s heaven..

_ ‘No, the gods wouldn’t be that kind. This is rapture beyond what you deserve.’ _ Jaime can’t think of anything more erotic than this, watching Brienne of Tarth riding him, her powerful thighs gripping around him, her back arched as another ecstatic convulsion tremors her body.

He wants to hold out, to let her keep discovering every angle that will please her, to help her learn the exquisite torture of a slow build as compared to a quick and frantic release. He wants to indulge her curiosity, to take his time and move with her through every variation he knows, and maybe invent some new ones. But she is too glorious, and control is rapidly slipping from his grasp.

_ ‘There will be other nights,’ _ he tells himself.  _ ‘There have to be. Other nights for us to find every pleasure the gods can give.’ _

“Brienne,” he rasps, but she’s so lost to euphoria that he has to shake her shoulder. “Brienne, I’m--”

Her eyes widen in sudden understanding, and she rolls inelegantly off of him. His cock aches with the sudden loss of her warmth, but however satisfying it would have been to spend himself in her, that’s a potential complication they can ill afford. He closes his eyes and arches his back, emptying himself instead upon his own stomach. She’s watching him, blue eyes wide in fascination, and her gaze alone coaxes a few extra twitches out of him. As his breathing slows, she finds a damp cloth, left over from their earlier, perfunctory ablutions. Then they lie down, side-by-side, to rest at last.

Neither of them sleep beyond a light doze; it’s still too soon for that to feel safe. Jaime pulls the bed’s woolen blanket up over them both. Somewhere, outside, the sun is climbing higher. It’ll be dark again before long, but at least this night will not be full of terrors.

Jaime watches as Brienne’s eyes drift closed. He doesn’t want to make a comparison, but his mind wanders there without his permission. Only natural, he supposes. What he just experienced with Brienne was… transcendent. And he only has one thing to compare it to.

Cersei has always been beautiful like a work of art, carefully designed to appeal. Brienne is like a natural wonder, too magnificent to ever be pretty, and too much herself to ever be changed by mere mortal forces. She is splendor, she is awe-striking thunder, she is-- “Perfection.”

He doesn’t realize he’s said it aloud until her eyes blink open. “What did you say?”

Smiling, he threads his fingers into the little hairs at the back of her neck. “Nothing. Not important.”

Suspicion flits briefly across her face, before she swipes at her eyes with the back of one hand. “We should go,” she says. “We should go help with… well, with whatever needs doing.”

He’s still a selfish man at heart, and he doesn’t want to. He wants to stay here, wrapped up in her, until spring comes. But Brienne is a better knight than he’s ever been. She takes her duty seriously, and if she’s venturing out, then so will he. They’re both relatively uninjured and still strong, even if they’re exhausted. And doubtless their strength would be welcome in sorting out whatever hell daylight shows the field of battle to be.

Jaime kisses her once more: a long, slow kiss this time, born not of lust and desperation, but of an inner ache he hardly knows how to name. He could go on kissing her forever, and damn the rest of the world.

But because it’s what she wants, he pulls back, brushes his lips against her hair, and says, “All right, ser. Let’s go make ourselves useful.”

 

*

 

They dress warmly, but forego their armor, which is still encrusted with the viscera of the dead. A job for later, cleaning that, and whatever tasks await them will likely be easier accomplished without such encumberment. Much of the padding, Brienne thinks, will have to be burned. The black blood and other gore soaked into it will never come out.

Brienne helps Jaime to clean off his golden hand, though, and to lash it to his arm. He seems to draw his outward persona on with his clothes, his posture stiffening, the softness going out of his face. In a moment, he’s wrapped in red wool and warm leathers, and he looks every bit what one would expect from a victor of battle. Resolute, chiseled, and impervious to harm.

He’s always been the Golden Knight. He was barely out of childhood when he was earned his honors, when he was pressed into the Kingsguard, when he fought his way into his first legacy, his first infamy. That’s what everyone sees, when they look at him: his great deeds and his terrible ones, as though cast in bronze. That’s what  _ she _ saw, at first.

_ ‘How many people see anything else?’ _ she wonders.  _ ‘Or perhaps I ought to ask how few?’ _ How many know that he is funny -- at least when he takes the cruel barbs out of his jests? How many see that he is affectionate, demonstratively so? How many have any idea what depth of emotion lurks beneath his insouciant demeanor?

_ ‘One.’ _

Maybe more than that, Brienne allows. Tyrion certainly seems to know his brother quite well, and perhaps there are some spare few others. But only one, she thinks, who really mattered, and a tremor of fear runs through her.

One, who will have to be dealt with now, a lioness in full strength. One, who might choose to whistle for Jaime and see if he’ll come back to her once more.  _ ‘And what if he does, now that the battle for the living is over?’ _ Brienne thinks of what the Stark boy said in the council chamber, words pointed at Jaime as though they meant something:  _ ‘The things we do for love.’ _ And of Jaime’s own words, years earlier,  _ ‘We don’t get to choose who we love.’  _ What happens, then, when two loves, two loyalties, crash into each other?

As soon as they step out into the hallway, where people are bustling back and forth carrying firewood, buckets of water, clean rags, he reaches for her hand. There’s a light behind those green eyes, a kindled fire of what might be hope. Jaime lifts her fingers and presses them, gloved though they are, to his lips.

He doesn’t say anything, but it feels, somehow, like a vow.

 

*


End file.
